Rain on the Way to a Wedding
Sunday, June 28, 2026 at 8:32PM 
Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe weekend came into view at last, and with it a morning that started smoothly — no early alarms of the urgent kind, just the gentle beginning a Saturday ought to have. There were rounds to do, of course; the ward doesn't observe weekends, and there's something almost meditative about the quieter weekend version of it, the corridors calmer, the pace more forgiving. I worked through it without event and emerged into the rest of the day feeling I'd earned it.
I caught up with the football, naturally — that ongoing ritual of reassembling the night's results, the World Cup still unspooling across distant time zones while we sleep. By now I've stopped fighting the rhythm of it. I take my football secondhand and slightly stale, and I've come to find a certain charm in arriving at the drama after everyone else has gone home.
Then out to Kota Damansara for physio, that standing appointment my right shoulder and I have reluctantly entered into. The session does its work — somewhere between massage and mild interrogation — and I leave each time feeling marginally improved and considerably more aware of muscles I'd rather not have been introduced to. Progress, they assure me. I take their word for it.
A quick bite afterwards, grabbed in the gap, and then the heavens opened. Properly opened — the sort of tropical downpour that turns car parks into rivers and reduces every driver to a crawl, wipers labouring, visibility down to the next set of brake lights. There's a particular resignation that settles over the Klang Valley when the rain arrives like that: everyone simply slows, accepts the delay, and waits for the sky to finish its business.
The evening's main event was a wedding dinner — the son of one of Anita's old friends from her UiTM days, held out at Le Meridien Putrajaya. There's a lovely continuity to these occasions, watching the children of long friendships arrive at their own milestones, the parents now seated in the role their own parents once held. Anita moved easily through the reunions, that warm rediscovery of faces not seen in years, while I did my contented part — eating well, nodding along, enjoying the gentle theatre of a Malaysian wedding dinner in full swing.
The drive out to Putrajaya in the wet had its own slow patience to it, but the destination was worth the journey: those broad ceremonial avenues looking rather grand under the rain, the hotel warm and bright against the weather. It was the kind of evening that asks little of you beyond presence and appetite, both of which I supplied generously.
We finished well after half ten, which by my current standards counts as a genuinely late night. The drive home was quiet, the rain finally easing, the day's long arc settling at last into tiredness. A full Saturday — rounds, physio, a downpour, and a wedding — and a good one. I went home damp, well-fed, and ready for sleep.
Late as Usual
Saturday afternoons were always a bad time for me. My clinic tended to finish late and there were always patients which needed seeing after lunch, before I leave the hospital for the day. By the time I was done, it was usually after 3 pm. I tended to either have lunch at the hospital or take Anita out for a late lunch.
Saturday afternoon were also popular times for weddings. It usually ran until 4 pm, and it was almost customary that we showed up the last half an hour. With that, sometimes we had no food left. That created a dilemma for me. I usually had to content with what I had for breakfast until we leave the kenduri if that was the case.
Last Saturday was one of those occasion. It was a wedding of one of my Mum's friend's daughter and Anita was keen to go. I had no choice. I finally made it home at around 2.30 and rushed over to the wedding venue across town. It was the new Menara Felda this time. Luckily the traffic was light and the parking system was straight forward. I was already staring at the food by 3.30pm. Made it just in time.